It's good to be home!

Japan Part Two will come, but I'm still sorting through my feelings about being there during the earthquake event and the nuclear crisis that is ongoing......

So I thought I'd pop up a couple of nice to be home shots!

Xi was definitely pleased to be home!

The pumpkin patch did well, we've 24+ butternuts growing, so I'm hoping to get at least 15 ready and set before the vine's finished.

I did a new little succulent garden in an old crucible at the entrance to my studio, and got in a few vegie seedlings and some rhubarb into the patch.

And it was my birthday! I decided to try out a new cake, rather than my standard (and favourite) and I went straight to Nigella's Feast book, with the chocolate cake chapter.

This is the Chocolate Malt(easer) Cake, and I must say, even though I used different sized pans so the cake was not as high as the picture in the book, and was running around outside with a baby in a pram trying to rock him asleep while the cake was in the oven. It worked out pretty well. We decided that it'd be better as just one cake, with half the amount of icing, so maybe next time, or maybe I'll just try a different one! I did get lots of new cookbooks from DC!

Someone also got his first taste of cake, no icing, just a little morsel, and promptly went into a tantrum on the floor for more, so it couldn't have been all bad!

......Now I need to think of my Rosie New Year Resolutions... must make more frocks!

Baby Days

I originally thought that this blog would just be about things I've been doing and making, but have realised that I can't really remove what I'm doing from what I'm doing with my son Xi, as I'm generally doing things with him (or around him, or carting him off to places with me), so I thought I'd show some of the things we've been getting up to lately.

He's been getting put to work weeding, and is learning to tell the difference between plants we like, and plants to put in the bucket.

We've been doing gardening in the mornings as he likes to look at the sky, listen to the birds, and sample the dirt. I still haven't built my path (think I need more time and helpers) but we've cleared the space in between the paths and have since sown all our old seed in the area.

He's been eating lots, and getting quite a wagayu build happening. I just liked this picture and wanted to put Tom in.

I turned 30 and had a lovely party at DCBS's, but this is the only picture I took... the balloons were a big hit with the bub.

And we all learnt (and remembered) how to play mahjong which is my new favourite game to whip people's patooties in! (well....attempt to)

And I was experimenting with the layout, and it went blah and didn't want to go back! Apologies for the mess (and all the underlining...)

cooking shenanigans... and jelly building

I thought I'd best post on Christmas before re-jumping into the new year.

I had visions of our holiday being so relaxing, like we could just stop running around like mad things and breathe a bit. I forgot that after running around like said mad things for so long, it's often likely that you get sick when you stop. Which Tom did. Not fun for him. And teething ramped up a notch for Xi. Not fun for him.

But we were still on holiday, and much hilarity ensured.

I decided I had the time to be in the kitchen properly, and took advantage of the babysitting of nana and poppy to bake. Unfortunately I wasted my cooking zeal on a new type of cake recipe (make a sugar syrup and whip egg whites... never done it that way before) which promised moist, but I found a bit dry or bland or something that doesn't live up to the process of the making, spiral biscuits, you know the ones, chocolate dough, cinnamon dough, layer them on top of one another, roll and cut...... terrible recipe again, waaaaaay too short, thought they were going to melt in the steamy humidity while I was attempting to roll them up, and then melt into black buttery splatter in the oven. Surprisingly they didn't (melt and smoke that is) but after a time in the freezer, they weren't round anymore, instead we got crazy spirals which looked cool, but tasted quite bland, and to add insult to injury, after they were initially eaten, the bottle got forgotten in the cupboard, and the rest of the biscuits went to the scrub turkeys as a holiday treat.

All this disappointing baking happened in one day after weeks of thinking about cooking and what I'd do if I had the time. All I can say is, make a favourite recipe first, or else you'll just despair.

Thank goodness for jelly.

I love making layered jelly, not that excited about eating it, but stripe making is fun. So I volunteered to do the Christmas trifle - individual build your own - style.

Here's a pic of my mum 'supervising' my cousins in the plonking of chocolate cake (beautifully cut out by Kayt with cookie cutters) on top of the jelly.

And here is the 5 star jelly in a plastic cup. Four layers of jelly, one with fruit in it, and a top of chocolate mousse (that was my favourite bit) A bit of cake, and then add your own cream, custard and ice cream. It started out for the kids only, then we figured everyone would like a jelly cup, and I heard that one uncle had the remaining four left over for breakfast the next morning.....

As much as jelly layering is fun, thank goodness for garden produce.

I try and try to grow basil down here to no avail, but at my parents, mum's got bushes of it, and yet there was no pesto in sight.......
We might have got them addicted to it after this harvest got pesto-sised! I started out just picking some for a small bit of pesto, then decided I mose well get rid of all the flowers and then ended up with a pile this big! That's a lot of pesto for someone who is proud of being able to pick five leaves at a time!

what I did during the renovating part 2

I know, very remiss of me, but time is really rushing past and I'm amazed how the days just slip away. It seems hard to do one thing, let alone several things, let alone finish random projects, but I'm getting back on that horse again, so hopefully the next couple of days will be full of posts!

While they were doing this:

Which Tom reckons it looks like they're miners down a pit...

I was doing these:

Onion dispenser bags! (except I only had one onion left, so oranges got to model, though you could have it as an orange dispenser)

Onions need to have air around them, and be in kinda the dark, but since our potato cupboard is frequently used to grow experimental new lifeforms (for the purpose of art of course) they can't really co-habit.

I was going through a 'how cool is flyscreen as a material' stage, and made up these. It's just a rectangle of flyscreen (plastic) some bias binding, some elastic and a bit of re-enforcing for the strap, I used scraps of leather I had lying around. The only trick is not to make them too long, because the onions get pretty heavy on the strap (my first one was over a metre, held more than 3k of onions, and didn't have re-enforcing on the strap...was a bit of an overkill...)

I made a normal sized one, and a slightly narrower one, for shallots possibly or picklers....take your pick, it's fun to dispense as well. These were for Helen, for her fantastic rendering work and DIY know-how. I've got a bit spare, so will be using up my excess with more bags soon!

We then sat down to Gremolata Osso Buco Pie with cheesy Polenta topping.
The grey render has now been professionally plastered over by a glassy friend as we figured it'd be much easier to get it done by someone who knows what they're doing then us cursing and making a mess of it. Now we just have to wait one more week and then painting - finally!

Yummy breakfast!

I've wanted to put up some pictures of food I've made, but none seem to have that photogenic quality (though most are tasty) but this breakfast this morning - pretty and delish!

Fruitsalad couscous with almonds, walnuts and rhubarb compote on top!

We'd run out of oatmeal and the chooks haven't been laying that much, so luckily we had a lot of fruit - it's a salad of: mandarin, pink pomelo, vanilla persimmon, kiwi fruit, banana and pineapple.